Latest Oftel broadband research

Posted by Simon Perry on 3 February 2003 at 12:41 pm | Tagged as: Distribution

The Register covers a story based on the most recent Oftel (UK teleco regulator) research. Now eight in ten UK Internet users know about broadband, which is encouraging as last year it was about 50/50.

From the Oftel report, we see that about two-thirds of all SMEs have Internet access, but only 13% use DSL/cable and around 4% are on leased lines.

BUT here’s the scary piece - about 1/4 of them currently use ISDN. BT has made very little effort, if any, to convert ISDN users to DSL - the reason is simple - they would lose income - doesn’t matter that it’s better for customer.

This is a typical BT - backward looking, squeeze every last penny you can from the customer, then when you absolutely have to, begrudgingly upgrade them. Deutsche Telekoms approach has always been more modern, when the advantages of ISDN over phone lines became obvious, they installed ISDN _instead_ of analogue phone lines, for no extra charge. They have also really pushed ADSL, by making it really attractive to upgrade.

I called BT “sales” to try and get details of the costings and was shocked to find that they flatly refused to give me _any_ information without my phone number - all I wanted was a price. I think an attitude like this says it all - the customers needs and interests are secondary to BT’s - one of the reasons that the number of UK broadband users is so pitiful.